Red Machine Page 7

  Gayle insists that racism wasn’t institutionalised at Liverpool. But some at Melwood were from the ‘old school’.

  ‘There were those that had pre-conceived ideas about black footballers,’ he says. ‘There would be little jibes. There would be racist jokes. But one of the worst things you can do to a black person is say, “Oh, I don’t mean you … you’re all right.” I’d been brought up in a way that confronting people on such issues had become second nature to me. My brothers used to tell me if you needed to pick up a brick or a rock to defend yourself, then do it – whatever you do, never let anybody bully you. At Melwood, clearly I couldn’t start scrapping, so I needed to respond to it in a different way. I soon realised that I could only change opinions by what I did on the football pitch.’

  Gayle did not find the transition to full-time football particularly challenging.

  ‘It was two hours a day, sometimes three on a Tuesday and a Thursday. If you’re playing with better players, you learn quicker and become a better player yourself. The ethos was five-a-side on most days, but they were played at such a high tempo and the pass-and-move game was so extensive that when it came to three o’clock on a Saturday afternoon, the actual games seemed easy. Most clubs just couldn’t live with it.

  ‘When I went to Birmingham, Sunderland and Newcastle, the first thing that the manager at each of those clubs asked me was “What’s Liverpool’s secret – what do they do in training?” I always told them that it was five-a-side. At Birmingham, they tried it for three or four weeks, but it didn’t change results, so we just went back to the tried-and-tested method of running, running and more running. What Birmingham didn’t understand was that the tempo was so high at Liverpool because they had good players who could deal with it. Because the whole club from the first team to the B team trained in the same way, it made Liverpool virtually invincible because every single player was ready to make the step up.’

  Roy Evans was Gayle’s coach in the reserve team. The pair shared a ‘special understanding’.

  ‘We had a banter between each other that perhaps nobody else would have. He’d call me a black so and so and I’d call him a white so and so. From my experiences in life, I know whether somebody means something when they say it. We respected each other and both knew that the other one meant no harm.

  ‘Evo had a great way of getting the best out of me. He made me want to win just for him. While I was at Liverpool, we won five Central League titles in succession. He was such a good man-manager because he could get the best out of players on the way up as well as players on their way down.

  ‘One day we were playing at Goodison Park against Everton in the derby and I was having an atrocious game. Everything that I did went wrong. Then I heard this voice on the touchline, “Right, he’s fucking coming off. I’ve had enough of this.” I looked across at him and he shouted something like, “You’re coming off, you black bastard.” I was fuming and I wanted to kill him. The next minute, the ball falls to me in the box: 1–0. Within three minutes we were 2–0 up and we won the game. At the final whistle I’ve gone down the tunnel because I wanted to confront Evo. I can see him vanishing towards the dressing-rooms as quickly as possible because he knew that I was coming. When I caught up with him, he was putting the kit away and there was this uneasy silence. We’d just beaten Everton 2–0 away from home and the manager wasn’t saying anything at all. I waited for everybody to leave, then just as I went to say something, he goes, “Bloody hell, that woke you up, didn’t it?”

  ‘The penny dropped. He did it deliberately to wind me up, and it worked. He went, “You know what, Howard, you’ve got so much ability that you should be playing at a higher level. But you’ve got to concentrate.” It was genuinely a fantastic moment because he knew that I’d have beef with him after the game but he got the best out of me.’

  One person Gayle found difficult to please was Ronnie Moran.

  ‘Ronnie had his set ways in what he thought constituted a good footballer. He preferred grafters over carefree players with a skill base to them. I had that. He didn’t seem to recognise that I was quite good with two feet, adaptable in the air and I could tackle as hard as I got tackled. Ronnie didn’t like that I stood up for myself. He thought I was a young player who should have known his place. I was a young player who wanted to play for my club and wasn’t going to accept any sort of crap from somebody who might stop me achieving that because I wanted to be judged on my ability with a football rather than by the colour of my skin. At times it seemed like I couldn’t do anything to please Ronnie. There were times when he’d watch me play for the reserves and he’d pick the bones of everything I did, always focusing on the bad points. He was like that with a lot of players, though – always trying to push you further by design to keep two feet on the ground. In the end, I had to learn to adapt to Ronnie rather than Ronnie adapting to me.’

  In October 1980, Gayle made his debut in the Liverpool first team, arriving as a 68th-minute substitute for David Fairclough at Manchester City.

  ‘It was a beautiful sunny day for once at Maine Road,’ he recalls. ‘We were 2–0 up, and the gaffer put us on. I had a small part to play in the third goal, but for me that was the start of living the dream of putting on a Liverpool shirt and playing in the first team in a first-class match. Even though I was on the pitch for 20-odd minutes, it seemed like hours.

  ‘I had indifferent memories of Maine Road because we’d lost the Central League there the year before after winning it three or four years on the bounce. City beat us with two games to go and did us by six points. There were 10,000 at Maine Road on an April night in 1980. It was a sad occasion. We’d been brought up on winning. Not to win the league was a heavy burden.

  ‘Making my debut at City banished those memories, because City were a very good side and had spent a lot of money to catch up to Liverpool. So for us to be beating them 3–0 on their own ground and me making my debut, the day couldn’t have gone any better.’

  If Gayle thought he’d made it into the first team, he was wrong. He was only used once again over the next five months, appearing on the bench during a 1–0 win over an Aberdeen team managed by Alex Ferguson at Pittodrie. After Christmas, he was sent on loan to Fulham, then in the Second Division.

  ‘It was a valuable experience in terms of my development as a person rather than as a footballer. It was my first time out of Liverpool on my own. London is a big and exciting city, but it made me realise how unique Liverpool is. The people are different, the culture is different, there’s a different way of thinking and socialising. Especially now, I think there’s so much going on and so much for younger people to do and aspire to be, the expectation levels and the achievement levels are a lot higher as well. In the ’70s and the ’80s, that wasn’t the case. The only major employers in the city were Ford, the docks and Jacobs. For a city of bright, creative people, that wasn’t enough.

  ‘Going from playing in front of 3,000 to 15–20,000 was a big step. It was a different level. It took me two or three weeks to adapt to it. But Fulham was a lovely, lovely football club. They were a family club and the type of people that ran it tried to help you in any way they could. I remember meeting Johnny Haynes, an England international, and he was like Cally or Yeatsy – a figurehead who’d give you the shirt off his back.

  ‘Bobby Campbell was the Fulham manager, a Scouser. He was a great character. He could have been at the London Palladium – he was that funny. He had a lot of charisma and was a grafter. I guess you had to be at that level because it was a hard time for the club. They were struggling to stave off relegation. Fortunately, that season they managed to do it.’

  Gayle was recalled to Anfield a month before the European Cup semi-final against Bayern Munich. After not even appearing on the bench in a goalless first leg at Anfield, Gayle was thrust into the limelight after only nine minutes in the return at the Olympic Stadium following an injury to Kenny Dalglish. Ian Rush, meanwhile, yet to score in nearly twelve months aft
er signing from Chester City, was left on the bench – a mark of how the two were regarded at the time.

  ‘There were 70,000 people and I was the only black person inside the stadium,’ he half chuckles. ‘So I became the target for all the abuse. I honestly didn’t give a shit. It spurred me on. I was thinking, “I’ve come here with Liverpool.” We were never going to get beaten. I kept on thinking about “You’ll Never Walk Alone”. We were never beaten and there’s always hope. No matter how bad things get, we can always get a result anywhere in the world because we’re Liverpool Football Club.

  ‘Every time I got the ball, the German supporters were doing the Sieg Heil sign. They had banners up with the swastika, and every time I looked into the crowd there was hatred and anger. They made monkey noises at me every time I touched the ball. I was relieved that there was a running track around the pitch, because it would have been even more hairy if the fans were closer.

  ‘Bob brought the pamphlet that was issued to all the Germans inside the stadium with directions to Paris for the final. It was very arrogant of them. We didn’t need a team talk. That’s why we won.’

  Gayle accepts that the game is fondly remembered for his impact, although the performance of fellow reserve-team player Colin Irwin should be appreciated as well.

  ‘Colin and Hansen were up against Dieter Hoeness and Rummenigge – world-class internationals – but they were kept quiet all the way through the night. Colin was really unfortunate that he didn’t become a regular Liverpool first-team player. Hansen, Thompson, Lawrenson and Emlyn Hughes had been knocking around when he was coming through, and they were all seasoned internationals. He was like the Hansen of the reserves – great touch, comfortable on the ball and prepared to join the midfield. In my opinion, at a different time he could have been an international player. I likened him to Bobby Moore because he was that composed on the ball. I’d grown up in the same area of Norris Green and was roughly the same age. Everybody knew about him and suspected that he’d become an England captain one day because he was that good. He also had that Scouse factor – a fighter.’

  A goal from Ray Kennedy with seven minutes to go sent Liverpool through on away goals – but only after Gayle had been substituted by Jimmy Case.

  ‘I was gutted and I think Bob acted too hastily,’ he says. ‘The gaffer subbed me because I made a foul, but it wasn’t malicious. He reckoned I was getting wound up by all the stuff going on in the terraces and the way the German defenders were trying to scythe me down every time I touched the ball. But I wasn’t. I was loving the atmosphere and the fact that these German players reckoned I was a handful. I was buzzing. But Bob got the wrong impression. He thought I was going to get sent off, and he didn’t want us going into extra time with ten men. Usually, I’ve kept my composure on the pitch. I was only sent off twice in my career, so the gaffer’s decision was really, really harsh.’

  Gayle recalls the first time he was sent off.

  ‘It was at Anfield in a reserve-team match against Bury. I’d gone in for a 50–50 with a defender, and as I’ve got up he’s spat on me and gone to say the word nigger, but before he’d got to “ger” I’d battered him. As soon as I’d finished, I walked, because I knew what the consequences were going to be. The other lad got sent off as well. It was in the first half, but fortunately we were already 3–0 up. As I sat in the bath, I was thinking, “I shouldn’t ’ave done that.” But there was one thing that got my goat and that was spitting. It’s a horrible habit, and I reacted the way I thought was right. Even if it happened today, I’d do the same. That’s my reaction.

  ‘Evo was fuming, but because the game was won he came in and went, “I’m gonna promote you in the boxing ring, Howie – I’ve never seen such a left-and-right combination.” When I went into Anfield on the Monday, the gaffer [Bob Paisley] wanted to see me straight away. He was waiting and I knew I was in trouble. But to be fair, he was brilliant. I explained what had happened and he said that I’d been stupid. “People are going to do whatever they can to stop you from playing because of the club that you play for and because of who you are. Being quick, strong and skilful, the only way they can stop you is by doing stuff like that. Eventually you’ll get sent off and you’ll be the one that suffers from it.” He was right. In fact, that talking-to from Bob was going through my mind around the time he substituted me in Munich.’

  Gayle’s post-Liverpool career might prove the club were right in letting him go. Yet with a little faith and appreciation of his background, his performance inside the Olympic Stadium is a clue of what he could have been. Gayle was quicker and more powerful than anyone else in the squad – a ball player who liked to dribble and excite the crowd.

  It is clear from interviewing other players who knew him that Gayle was perceived as having a ‘chip on his shoulder’. Although he now understands the difference between a friend’s joke and an enemy’s jibe, all he could do back then when entering an unfamiliar environment was revert to instinct. ‘People would say they were having a bit of a laugh. But, initially, I didn’t know whether they were, so the easiest way to deal with it was by attempting to put a swift end to it.’

  Gayle was also entering Anfield formed by experiences from Norris Green and bearing beliefs that he was neither willing nor understandably able to overlook. He confronted racism regularly throughout his career. It happened out of public earshot as well: inside the dressing-room, on the training pitch, at the players’ canteen, everywhere. On one occasion, Gayle admits threatening Tommy Smith – the former Liverpool captain – with a baseball bat after one too many ‘bad’ comments. ‘Tommy Smith upset me a lot because he’d been a hero of mine growing up.’

  All through his childhood and teenage life, Gayle had contested antagonistic behaviour towards him with hostility. To let something pass would be to reject his upbringing. He was not prepared to concede that for the benefit of the club or, indeed, his own career, even if it meant his superiors questioning his ‘character’ or ‘temperament’. But why should he have to? Gayle, a lone black teenager doing something that nobody had done before – even if it was in his hometown – really had no chance of being a long-term success at Liverpool.

  Ahead of the European Cup final of 1981 in Paris, though, his future seemed rosy. And that was despite the dark cloak of Thatcher’s despotism beginning to castrate Liverpool as a city barely two years into her reign. The People’s March for Jobs from Liverpool to London to highlight the escalating unemployment rates would take the whole of May to descend on the capital. Some Liverpool supporters who walked it carried on over the Channel and landed in Paris for 27 May.

  ‘Laurie Cunningham was playing for Madrid, and he was somebody I looked up to,’ Gayle recalls. ‘He was brilliant for West Brom. Like me, he was black, good with both feet, played down either flank or up front. He’d been out injured for most of the season, but the Real medical staff rushed him back into the team because he was that important to them.

  ‘The game itself was a non-event. The Parc des Princes was like a cow field because they’d played a rugby international there the Saturday before without cutting the grass afterwards. When we trained the night before the final, everybody was saying about how shite the pitch was.

  ‘Nothing was really happening, and with ten to go the gaffer told me I was going on because Kenny was struggling with his Achilles. He hadn’t trained for ages and was just trying to get through games because he was so important to the team. If we could get 60 or 70 minutes out of Kenny Dalglish, it was wiser than putting someone else in with less experience from the start. As I grew older, it was something I began to understand.

  ‘So I went to warm up, charging down the touchline, looking all prepared. Then we got a throw-in and Ray [Kennedy] threw it quickly into space for Alan Kennedy. I honestly didn’t expect to see what happened. Alan controlled it with his belly, took it past the first man and hit it. I was right behind the flight of the ball and I thought, “This is in.” The ball took its course and hi
t the net. I looked at the referee to make sure, then everything went off.

  ‘I knew it was all over, because Madrid had nothing in them to come back from a late goal. Then it dawned on me that I wasn’t going to go and replace Kenny. Bob brought Jimmy Case on instead and left Jonno up front on his own. That was that.

  ‘I was disappointed not to be going on, but I’m a Liverpool fan so that disappointment quickly turned to elation because the team was more important to me than any personal achievements. I was running round the pitch with the European Cup and a bobble hat on singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone” in a foreign country where 90 per cent of the supporters inside the stadium were Liverpool fans. There were people on the terraces who I’d fought and there’s me on the pitch. It was surreal.’

  Afterwards, the squad celebrated in the Moulin Rouge – the famous show house in Paris’s seedy Pigalle district.

  ‘They got us up with the can-can girls and we were dancing on the stage. The champagne was flowing and there were lots of women with limited clothes on prancing about and we’d just won the European Cup. All the wives were there as well. Nothing untoward went on.’

  Gayle looked forward to a summer of celebrating with the Liverpool squad as well as his mates from Norris Green and Toxteth. On an average weekend, Gayle’s drinking buddies were Sammy Lee, Kevin Sheedy, Ronnie Whelan and Ian Rush, as well as reserve-team players Robbie Savage, Alan Harper, Robbie Ditchburn and Alex Cribley (now the Wigan Athletic physio).

  ‘We used to go to Kirklands on Hope Street then the Continental, or “Snobs” as we called it. Ugly’s on Duke Street was another one. There was a regular routine: out on the Saturday night, sleep for a few hours, back up again and out on the lash for the whole Sunday. That would happen every week. Terry McDermott had hollow legs – he could drink all day and night. There was another lad at Birmingham just the same called Robert Hopkins. With Terry, though, if he’d been out, he’d still be right at the front of a running session the following morning, while everybody else would be throwing up on the side of the pitch. That would happen a lot – lads being sick – but if it ever affected your performance, even in training, you’d be out of the team quickly. In that sense, we were all aware of the limits our bodies could take, because there was a queue of people waiting to take your place.’